Compaq 8200 Elite

[Kai622]

Trying to help a friend with her  Compaq 8200 Elite CMT computer.

I made a windows 10 installation USB media stick.

I can’t get the HP to see the USB nor can. I change the boot order in F 9 .

I was reading on some forms here that I need to go in and clear the COMS.

I’m really not very experienced with all this, and just trying to help my friend out.  

If I clear the  COMS  and use recover boot from USB flash  drive will that Give the option to restore her computer back to place it was before it crashed.?

Or at least give it a clean start. I’d like to be able to restore it to where it was before it crashed so she doesn’t lose everything. I was able to retrieve some files from the Drive.   

It doesn’t seem possible to change the order to recognize the USB without clearing the sea COMS.

I have no idea what the COMS does.

I thought it would be as easy as just putting their USB drive flash drive in and restoring the OS .

How much do I need to know or learn to reset the COMS?

thank you 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Clearing the CMOS is probably not going to make a difference, but if you want to clear the CMOS it is easy enough to do.

See Appendix E of the service manual, pages 305 and 305.

c04224518.pdf (hp.com)

I also had problems booting from the USB flash drive on my 8200 Elite CMT's as well.  I have two of them.

The did not show the USB flash drive in the F9 boot options menu.

This is what I did to get them to boot from a W10 installation flash drive:

Instead of using the media creation tool to automatically create a W10 installation flash drive, download the W10 ISO file instead.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

Then download and install the free Rufus utility.   

Rufus will transfer the ISO file to a USB flash drive so that it is bootable.

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

Set up the Rufus menu exactly as you see it in the illustration for Windows installations.

Plug the flash drive in the PC's USB port.

I usually use the top one of the four.

Turn on the PC.

Tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.

Select the F9 boot options menu and you should see two lists of boot options--EFI and Legacy.

The Rufus created USB flash drive should be listed under the EFI boot options menu.

Select that drive and press the Enter key and hopefully, the PC will boot from the USB flash drive.